Kia ora, from Aotearoa-New Zealand! I am the Junior Co-Facilitator for Young Adults at General Assembly 2018 in Kansas City. The UUA stipend will not cover the entirety of the international plane tickets to get me to the US. Please consider donating to this campaign to help a graduate student work at GA without completely breaking the bank! Read the full description for more on who I am, and what I will be doing for our UU community this summer.

Campaigns close at 10:55 pm Eastern Time of the last day. Pledges are processed one day after the campaign ends successfully.

Description

Updates

UU Connection

Comments

Backers

A friend here in New Zealand gave me $20 NZD towards my Faithify! Check out the pretty polymer bills here: this one has the Karearea on it.

I am a young adult seeking financial support to recoup travel costs to work at GA 2018. As the junior co-facilitator for YA@GA and delegate for Auckland Unitarian Church, I am asking for your support to help me get to General Assembly in Kansas City 2018!

The UUA generously provides accomodation and food for volunteer staff during General Assembly, but the budget only accounts for domestic flights. The maximum stipend for flights is $600 USD, but the international flights and travel insurance are well over twice that! Such a large expense cannot be managed easily as a graduate student, so please consider giving a few dollars (or more) or sharing this Faithify on social media. Keep reading for a little bit more about me and my role at GA 2018/2019…

As the Junior Co-Facilitator I have been learning from some of our brilliant young adult leaders, in preparation for stepping up as the Senior Co-Facilitator for GA 2019. My role involves working with the Young Adult and Campus Ministry staff at the UUA in creating roles and the selection of our yearly volunteer YA@GA staff, organising workshops and social events for General Assembly, and ensuring everything runs smoothly at the event itself.

As for me, as a life-long UU and expatriate to the US, I am personally and spiritually delighted to be able to return to the US to participate in GA. I grew up in what is now the Southern District, at the Denton Unitarian Universalist Fellowship in Texas. I attended UU summer camps in Oklahoma (SWUUSI) most of my childhood and into young adulthood and even Maine (Ferry Beach) a few summers as a preteen.

Before emigrated out of the north Texas area, I spent my Sundays at Horizon Unitarian Universalist Church, organising workshops for the young adults, facilitating Coming of Age, and teaching Adult/Young Adult OWL.

I am dedicated to doing anti-racism work, such as the White Supremacy Teach-In at Auckland Unitarian and Undoing Racism with the People’s Institute for Survival and Beyond at GA in 2017. I am a member of Allies For Racial Equity, and have done a White Supremacy workshop for Horizon UU in Carrollton, Texas.

Here in New Zealand I am studying the experiences of transgender and gender diverse people with their doctors, and a volunteer locally for teaching on LGBT+ issues for university faculty and student leadership. As a delegate to a church so far from the US, I present my congregation with a unique and rare opportunity to participate and engage with UUA politics and going ons.

The nitty gritty:

Flights from NZ to the US are about $1400.00 USD, my required international travel insurance will be around $160-$200.00 USD. With the UUA travel stipend of $600.00 USD, it will be about $1000. $1200 should safely cover my expenses, processing fees on the Faithify platform, and any unforeseen travel add ons! Any amount raised over the goal will be put towards the trip to GA 2019, where I will be the Senior Co-Facilitator for YA@GA.

Thank you for your time and energy, and I hope to see you at GA in Kansas City!

Updates

[caption id="attachment_3202" align="alignnone" width="300"] Here is Cassie, in their natural environment, writing workshop content for Adulting for UUs: Work and Beyond! Hope to see you there!! Note: cat will not be included in workshop content.[/caption]

Project UU Connection

I am the delegate for the Auckland Unitarian Church, past member of Church of the Larger Fellowship, and current member of Allies for Racial Equity. I was hired as part of the volunteer staff for YA@GA in 2017 and began work as the Junior Co-Facilitator after GA in NOLA 2017. It is a two year term, so it is a fairly committed relationship.

I was raised in the Denton UU Fellowship in Denton, TX and UUism is a foundational aspect of who I am and how I relate to the world. Before I expatriated, I did a year of volunteer work at Horizon UU Church in Carrollton, TX, working with Young Adults, Coming Of Age, and Our Whole Lives programming.